Fathom | a toxic workplace in a toxic world

“I’m a recovering nihilist,” says Holly Holdsworth. We’re chatting about her short, Fathom, which is set in a future where the chirping beep of a Geiger counter could replace a dawn chorus, while all the power-plays of toxic relationships remain.

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[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOELowXZIRQ[/embedyt]

“I struggle with creating worlds that anyone would ever want to live in,” she happily admits.

For a filmmaker who began in her teenage years, Fathom marks a different chapter in what Holly makes.

Dark places

“I always start from quite a dark place,” she says.

In this case, that dark place was one particular rabbit hole about the steel industry, where she found info saying there’s so much radiation in the air right now that steel can’t be made in the same way it has been.

That idea was poured into Fathom. What if the Cold War had got hotter and there were people living on the fringes of a world that has stark ecological issues as well as massive employment problems?

Add to that the reality of real-life workplace situations.

In Fathom, that manifests as an unemployed scuba diver trying to convince a burnt-out recruiter to hire her for a dangerous job.

Phoebe Cresswell and Maya Yenn in Fathom

“I’ve never tried to join a criminal gang that’s chopping up ships from the China Sea, which is a legit thing that happens,” says Holly, but we all know some work environments that have been brimming with toxic.

Turmoil

“I create worlds that reflect the turmoil characters are going through. One day, I’ll write a comedy, and it’ll be lovely,” says Holly.

The world design was something that came up a lot in the post-production process, both with editor Ronit Meranda and with Tim Bamber in sound design. In essence, Fathom is a two-hander, and the question was how to bring that outer world into the room. They used powerful snippets of water to point to a world outside that interview room. Plus the sound design introduced the idea of an environment in turmoil.

Oppresive

To underline a future world, visual cues were drawn from Blade Runner, 2049, where Ryan Gosling seeks out Harrison Ford in the broken-down casino. It’s the orange light and colour palette that appealed, along with the decrepit technology and the feel of a hot, oppressive world. And the orange was a nice contrast to the blue water.

“It’s very difficult to find blue water in the UK. Most of it is brown, either from estuaries or from outflow,” says Holly. “But that’s just the ecological state of the current UK, let alone this alternative-universe UK.”

The office scenes were filmed in old offices in Liverpool, before a renovator got their hands on them, with the water scenes filmed in Bridlington, East Riding.

Power dynamics

Editor Ronit was onboard at the early idea stages of the film and was drawn to the power dynamics of the two women on the screen.

“I totally got the relationship,” says Ronit. “The awkward shift between the two characters. It’s the way they need each other – they want to support each other – but they also don’t want to be too vulnerable.

“What I love about the film is that it sets the mood. What we care about is the dynamic, because that relationship dynamic is fantastic. They are both worn down and miserable in their own ways. And it’s got a complex reality that you don’t often see. That was both scarily refreshing and just refreshing to see, but handled so well.”

Part of that is down to the interaction between the actors, Maya Yenn (who was also the composer) as Indiana, and Phoebe Cresswell as Avery. The two actors knew each other from drama school, so they already had a longstanding friendship.

“You could obviously tell that there was an existing relationship between them,” says Holly. “They threw themselves into it. They were both willing to be vulnerable with a crew they only half knew.”

Fathom is a reflection of the need and rejection of female relationships in the workplaces.

Uncertain

“Those are the relationships I found most difficult to navigate,” says Holly. “Do we have some sort of affinity, because we were having shared experiences based on how people are put into gender roles, or fall into gender roles, in some workplaces? But those relationships can be more uncertain. Sometimes you think it’s amazingly supportive, and actually you find out later it’s been something totally different. It’s that in a microcosm that I wanted to explore. And then the world-building was the flavour around it.”

The performances certainly seesawed that tension.

“As an editor, it was bliss to work with the footage because the performances were so good,” says Ronit. “Often I find that my job is to pick out the best bits of the performance. With this film, they were just both so good, and the camera work was so good we had the freedom to work on that tension – a lot of that was clear from the script.”

Tension

Holly admits to playing with the drama in her scripts.

“I’ll build up this great tension, and I’ll start undercutting it with an awkward silence or a really random joke that doesn’t make any sense,” she says.

It gave Fathom a structure in what could be a back-and-forth conversation. The moments of tension were broken and built up again like waves on the shore, punctuated by water footage.

The first time Holly saw Fathom on the big screen was at Two Short Nights in Exeter, which was its premiere.

“When it’s comedy, you can hear the reactions more easily,” she says. “Whereas with drama, there is that reverent silence that everyone goes into. I don’t know if I’m making it up, but it almost feels like you can feel the pulse.

“Part of the experience that is going to stay with me is people coming up afterwards and talking about the relationship with the characters and their thoughts on the Q&A that followed.”

Possibility

The making of the film brought together a lot of people who Holly had wanted to collaborate with for a long time.

“This didn’t receive any funding from any organizations or investors. It made me feel what’s possible in two and a half days’ filming time. And made me see the possibility of making things.”

Next up for Holly is a microbudget feature, which will be shooting its proof of concept in the summer. For Ronit, her short Pump Off, about a group of new mums having a breast pumping tournament, is coming out soon.

At the moment, 63 percent of people in the film industry think doing their film job is detrimental to their mental health, says Holly. It’s one of the reasons the tensions in Fathom resonate. “I hope it will stop resonating with people,” says Holly, “because we’ll be having such a great time.”